Ask YC:  Creating Models - <AUTHOR>

I'm starting to plan out a small online game and need to get some advice on building mathematical models.  These models are definitely not scientific and don't really need to be exact, just something that is close and works as expected.  I don't even think they need to be particularly large.  For most of what I'm doing, there will only be 2-5 inputs.<p>Are there any good online guides to building formulas and how various functions can control the output?  I don't have any great background in math but I'd expect that there has to be some sort of examples online that I could dissect and rearrange. <comment><USER2> If you don't mind tracking down books, I would recommend a few that do a good job introducing modeling.

B.S. Bennett, "Simulation Fundamentals" covers basic simulation from a programmer's perspective. It covers both discrete and continuous systems. It has an "older" feel to it than many resources (for instance, it compares analog vs digital computer implementations), but for me this basic approach made it a useful introduction.

Andrew Ford, "Modeling the Environment: An introduction to system dynamics modeling of environmental systems" is nice because it looks at real (albeit simplified) environmental systems, which gives it a useful grounding. Focus is continuous systems (i.e., characterized by ordinary differential equations).

Arthur Few, "System Behavior and System Modeling" treats simpler systems than Ford's book. I recall this being a very direct, easy-to-read book (I was researching books to teach systems dynamics to high school students). Unfortunately, this one may be hard to find now.

</comment><comment><USER3> I'm not really clear what you are trying to do with these models, but agent based modeling may be related : <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agent- based_model> This may be a useless comment, but I would also recommend you focus on the software engineering aspect - provide a clean, simple interface that describes what you want and do a naive implementation that will allow you to work out the rest of your system, then you can keep working while studying the ideal mathematical model for behavior. I think the general search term for this field is "numerical analysis". One quick and dirty technique that is sometimes useful if you have a set of input vectors and a set of goal states is to do polynomial interpolation with something like a lagrange polynomial.</comment>


German MPs vote for new law to fine social media companies over illegal content - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-40444354 <comment><USER2> As a European I love to write smug rants on the internet about how our governments and our political culture are better than those of the US. However, stuff like this worries me.

We need more freedom of speech, not less. The US is miles ahead of us in this respect. Here in Europe, we're missing that fundamental value of "I disagree with what you say, but I will fight for your right to say it". Instead, it's more like "I disagree with what you say so I'm going to try to get you arrested for it". Eg Dutch xenophobe politician Geert Wilders got dragged into court _twice_! (ridiculous, and also countereffective because guess what it did for his ratings)

This sort of stuff is much worse, however. Given the 24 hour deadline, the only way Facebook reasonably can implement this is automation. A computer program determining whether my post is hate speech or satire? Seriously? Computers can't even tell the difference between a puppy and a cupcake. Why does anyone think this is a good idea?

A long time ago I used to hang out on an IRC channel that banned "bad words". The bot was very enthusiastically tuned with conservative American values. There was a user called "War^" but "war" was a forbidden word. Talking to him got you kicked out, mentioning him thrice got you banned.

Obviously, the solution there was simple: leave the IRC channel and never come back. But I'm not sure people will feel they have the same option for their favorite social media.

<comment><USER3> > We need more freedom of speech, not less.

You seem to be very convinced of this. Could you please list one or two concrete cases where you think free speech was too limited in Europe and where this limitation led to a poor outcome for society? I think this could make your argument much stronger.

<comment><USER4> I'm not the OP you're asking, but here's one example where a Dutch man was jailed for insulting the king:

[http://www.dutchnews.nl/news/archives/2016/07/man-jailed- for...](http://www.dutchnews.nl/news/archives/2016/07/man-jailed-for- insulting-the-dutch-king/)

edit: more examples from some other European countries [http://www.euronews.com/2016/04/15/beyond-a- joke-7-countries...](http://www.euronews.com/2016/04/15/beyond-a- joke-7-countries-where-is-it-a-criminal-offence-to-insult-a-head-of)

<comment><USER3> While I agree that it's bad to prevent people from speaking poorly about a king, that's not representative of the kinds of things that the German law is addressing. As such this is not a very strong example, IMO.

<comment><USER4> You asked for examples in which free speech was too limited and resulted in a poor outcome for society. You asked that in response to:

"We need more freedom of speech, not less. The US is miles ahead of us in this respect. Here in Europe, we're missing that fundamental value of "I disagree with what you say, but I will fight for your right to say it". Instead, it's more like "I disagree with what you say so I'm going to try to get you arrested for it"."

Therefore my example is germane and quite a clear example given your question.

Here are more examples (again Netherlands, Switzerland, Poland, Spain):

[http://www.euronews.com/2016/04/15/beyond-a- joke-7-countries...](http://www.euronews.com/2016/04/15/beyond-a- joke-7-countries-where-is-it-a-criminal-offence-to-insult-a-head-of)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> As much as I hate Facebook and I think it's one of the main vectors of all the social unrest cancer we see metastasizing everywhere in western society nowadays, this decision is stupid and does only yet more harm to free speech than actually address any real problem, but serves only to sweep it under the rug until it explodes in our face.

Of course, most politicians involved in making this happen won't ever have to deal with one iota of the inconvenience they bestow over their general population.

<comment><USER3> Social media are arguably amplifying those "real problems" and regulating them is therefore a very reasonable thing to do, as it is reasonable to do something about mosquitoes that are spreading deadly diseases [0] (using this example because you mentioned vectors as an analogy). I don't think that the law they passed implies that nothing else will be done to address the underlying causes of these issues. Suggesting it does is disingenuous.

[0] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vector_control](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vector_control)

<comment><USER5> > I don't think that the law they passed implies that nothing else will be > done to address the underlying causes of these issues. Suggesting it does is > disingenuous.

Many politicians, especially in the mainstream, operate on a 'lowest possible effort' basis to pretend they're giving a damn about their electorate, which is why so many completely awful laws and trade deals get passed just by giving it a friendly-sounding name, all while pocketing a hefty 'extra payment' for their collaboration.

I'll be more surprised to find out that something concrete was done about the cause of extremism in Europe than to find out that there was a ridiculously large network of bribed politicians involved in passing this law.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> It wasn't that long ago when they were burning books that didn't conform to the social norms of the establishment. You'd think Germans would be smarter than to make the same mistake twice. The social media companies must fight this law. What if, say, Russian government demands removing any content promoting homosexuality (as it is currently against Russian law)? This type of shit will destroy Internet as we know it.

<comment><USER3> Honestly, comparing this to burning books in the Third Reich is simply showing that you know very little about history or that you choose to ignore it to make some simplistic argument for unconditional free speech. The horrible crimes of the Third Reich shouldn't be invoked so casually.

<comment><USER7> There is no such thing as conditional free speech.

<comment><USER8> Well, there are circumstances like yelling "fire" in a crowded place. But otherwise, I agree.

<comment><USER9> Even in that case, I'd argue that you're penalised not for the speech itself, but because it was used in a premediated way that caused concrete physical harm to people. As in, you're free to carry a gun, but you're not free to fire at people without good reason. And even then you're free (as in unrestrained) to fire at whoever you like, but there are consequences. Contrast that with automatic censorship on the internet which is like having a gun that will not fire at certain people, period, and the bullets themselves would change trajectory to not hit anyone the algorithm deems "not worthy of being shot".

<comment><USER10> And how is tweeting e.g. that "$minority_group is the root of all evil and should be shot on sight" not a "premeditated way [of speech] that caused concrete physical harm to people"?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I really don't think that it should be a social media company's responsibility to police the internet. If a person posts something illegal, I think it should be that person that should be punished and it should be the job of the government/police/courts to do so. The social media company could then remove the content after that.

<comment><USER3> I guess that's a valid stand point, but to be fair, analogous regulations are very common for other businesses, especially in the US. For example, bars have to make sure that their patrons do not smoke and that they have legal age. There are thousands of these regulations and they are rarely perceived as attacks on basic freedoms but rather seen as common sense. What is different about internet companies that they should not have the responsibility to enforce such rules on their premises?

<comment><USER8> It's one thing to "enforce such rules on their premises", as China does. But for each nation to impose its laws on the entire Internet? That's just insane. And won't end well.

<comment><USER12> But you seem to be saying it's okay for US companies to impose the extremist version of freedom of speech that the US has on other nations.

And that's not going to end well.

<comment><USER8> I'm arguing for more freedom of speech than the US has.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> >must take down posts containing hate speech or other criminal material within 24 hours

Maybe this will convince facebook to remove decapitation videos.

<comment><USER14> After 24 hours those are old news anyway, just flag it for automatic removal after 23 hours and 59 minutes.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Aside from the censorship debate, I still wonder what measures the German government has to enforce these fines. None of the discussed big companies are settled in Germany, but are regulated under European law. Where is the connection? Does a EU member have the capability to use EU regulators to enforce fines based on state law?

<comment><USER16> I would expect any large company to have a subsidiary legal entity in each country it operates, even if just a sales office - they are operating in the local legal environment (in this case Germany).

e.g. Here is the UK subsidiary of Facebook - I'd expect there to be a German equivalent:

[https://beta.companieshouse.gov.uk/company/06331310](https://beta.companieshouse.gov.uk/company/06331310)

<comment><USER8> Well, then they should shut down that German one, no?

And move all operations out of Germany.

Maybe blacklist all German IPs, just for jolly ;)

Edit: Also, Facebook does have a Tor onion gateway. For users in places that block access. That'd work as well for Germans as well as Chinese etc.

<comment><USER16> And lose a potentially valuable market - yes they could do that.

<comment><USER8> I wonder who would back down first.

At some point, Internet-based firms will need to take a stand on this. Otherwise, they'll just get pecked to death.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> > sites with more that two million users in Germany must take down posts > containing hate speech or other criminal material within 24 hours.

Censorship and fines galore. Just this week: a €2.4B fine from the EU for Google's integrated shopping view. A Canadian ruling stating that Google had to enforce Canadian censorship worldwide. And now, huge fines for content that the German government finds objectionable.

How long before google, Facebook, etc. retreat to the US entirely (or even to some liberal island nation)? Sooner or later, the economic benefit of a data company having a physical presence somewhere is outweighed by the cost of overbearing censorship laws. Maybe it's time for the Sultanate of Kinakuta to become a reality.

Google and Facebook should start investing heavily in anti-censorship technology a la Tor and I2P. Sadly, I fear that this may soon become necessary in "liberal" nations like Germany. It's already necessary in the U.K., with draconian anti-pornography and anti-cryptography laws.

<comment><USER18> As much as I'd be impressed if Europe managed to pull a China and replace the unicorns from SV with homegrown (and tax-paying) alternatives, I doubt that's ever going to happen. Google and FB have such ridiculously high profit margins that this is still just nibbling at the edges of it.

<comment><USER17> €2.4B is a very large chunk of Google's annual profit. How much do these companies gain from having a legally vulnerable physical presence in the EU? I'd guess not more than a few billion dollars a year. The primary benefits are hiring, taxes, and maybe some CDN improvements, but those can be worked around.

<comment><USER19> The primary benefit is having an entity to bill their customers (i.e. advertisers). And no, the shop next door will never go through the hassle to wire money to the US (which can be seized in transfer anyway).

<comment><USER17> Great, this opens up an opportunity for Bitcoin transfers to Kinakuta.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Hypothetically speaking, if Facebook didn't want to comply, and they shutdown any German entities that could be exposed to fines, what would Germany's next move be? To block Facebook completely from the country?

</comment><comment><USER21> Somebody or some group might abuse this law with the intent to bring Facebook down.

</comment><comment><USER22> What the heck is happening to this thread?

The comments disappear before I manage to answer to them.

What sort of Soviet-alike censorship is that?

<comment><USER16> It could be the author of comments deleting them - I quite often delete comments a few moments after posting them.

<comment><USER23> To add to that, I usually do so because somebody beat me to what I wanted to say. As was the case in this thread.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Social media sites != open internet.

Before you make any statements about his this could potentially suppress voices and opinions, you can always make your own site. Even if the government did not interfere with these sites, the sites themselves totally have the right to regulate everything that's being posted. This is only to encourage this because companies like facebook didn't seem to give much of a damn about regulation.

<comment><USER25> > Before you make any statements about his this could potentially suppress > voices and opinions, you can always make your own site.

Social media allows you to use a pseudonym which makes it possible to share an opinion (and thus, to a tiny extend, shape society) without the people who know you in "real life" learning about it. If you have a personal website you have, by German law, to publish your name and address on this website. As a result, people can google what you write.

So if you want to discuss an opinion that people you interact with in real life don't accept you have to accept that they could find your posts. This, naturally, could have a chilling effect leading to you not writing about issues you care about.</comment></comment>


Microsoft Internship - <AUTHOR> http://blackhole12.blogspot.com/2012/07/microsoft-internship.html

<comment><USER2> I could barely get through this. It's just overflowing with arrogance and cockiness. This kid is probably unbearable to be around.

<comment><AUTHOR> Oh, definitely. He doesn't give a damn about how anyone is supposed to do anything and is convinced he's going to "change the world" or something stupid like that. Clearly a bad influence.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> If ever the mods should change a title it should be this one. Given the shootings yesterday, and the connection that has via swombat with the bombs on the trains in London, this is a poorly, poorly named article that bears no true relationship with the content.</comment>


Ask HN: Should I switch companies? - <AUTHOR>

I am currently working with a self-funded startup. There are three of us. I am not helping fund it at all. They are paying me $60k/year, but I am working as a self-employed freelancer.
As far as my experience goes. I went to college at 16, landed my first job at 17, stopped college after 2 years and pursued more work. I've been working in the field since then and I am now 23. So I have roughly 7 years experience, with the majority of that work being done the last 4 years.
For the past 6 years I have developed mainly with PHP/MySQL, Javascript, and HTML/CSS. And using numerous frameworks and libraries.
Lately my stack looks something like: Laravel for my backend PHP Framework, MySQL as my Database, Angular as my frontend Framework, with bits of jQuery in there. I have been using Nginx as my server and know my way around Amazon Web Services and have everything on Amazon EC2. I've been building mobile applications with Titanium and Alloy as the MVC Framework. I am proficient with Photoshop.
Here is my predicament. A local software development company has been talking with me a bit, they know my skill level, they are looking for a full-stack developer with a skill set similar to mine that they can also train. They are small with around 10 of them, but they are well established offer a competitive salary and full benefits. After talking with the owner, he said he I am worth more than the $60k/yr I am being paid. Now with the $60k/yr I am being paid I also will be getting a percentage of the profits. Starts at 10% the first year, 15% the second, and stops at 20% the third year. But they aren't making any money yet.
My decision: to take the risk of staying with the current startup with the potential to make lots of money if its successful or pursue this other position and get paid a better salary with full benefits, a better working environment, the opportunity to work with other developers. <comment><USER2> If the company is distributing profits rather than investing them in growth, then it is not a startup, it's a small business.

If the company is closely held, e.g. some sort of limited liability company or S-corp, then profits are often kept as small as possible unless otherwise dictated by an operating agreement among the stockholders.

For example, if revenue outpaces expenses by $120k, the stockholders can award themselves $100k in bonuses and the company's profit is $20k and you would see $2k at 10% instead of $12k [and there's nothing stopping the stockholders from awarding all $120k as bonuses in which case you would see nothing]. And that's just when they don't anticipate increased revenues. If they anticipate $120k greater revenue versus expenses next year the stockholders can give themselves $120k worth of raises.

If there's long term revenue streams, the stockholders can hire on family as consultants, enter the company into leasing agreements with companies that they own, and basically take anything that could be profit out of the company and it's all perfectly legal and common for closely held companies.

The reasons are that the tax situation of the stockholders of a closely held company is pretty much the same either way, but any assets of the company can be taken via lawsuit against it, while the personal assets of the owners are protected via limited liability.

None of this is to say that these things are necessarily running through the stockholder's minds. But not being a stockholder pretty much places any future revenue subject to the good will of the stockholders and it is not uncommon for people to make self interested choices when real money is involved.

BTW, being a minority stockholder doesn't really change much absent an operating agreement which governs the way in which profits, bonuses and salaries are determined and getting that is unlikely.

Good luck.

<comment><AUTHOR> Wow. Thank you for this. This is insight that I never ever would have thought of because of my lack of dealing with this sort of situation. Obviously profit sharing and equity make a huge difference. If I stay with this startup I will absolutely make sure I get equity and rather than profit sharing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Well, on the one hand, you are at a unique the time of your life when you can invest your time into a startup (assuming you are single, and willing to eat some ramen). On the other hand, clearly you could be doing better, and any skills/experience/salary history you acquire now will put you in a very attractive position in a few years, and really will compound for the rest of your life.

I think you need to do some soul searching, and ask what is your motivation, what is your passion? Are you in this startup because you believe in it, think it can fly, and are willing to sacrifice a lot? Or are you there because you fell into it, they gave you a job, they're good guys, etc?

Other questions to ask are:

\- What's your risk tolerance?

\- Do you mean to have a family some day?

\- How important is money to your situation?

\- What would you value more: the experience of building something yourself, or the experience of working on a team?

<comment><AUTHOR> I have a family already. I am married with an 8 month old daughter and plan on having one more child. Thats what is really making me consider going with the more established company.

With that said though, I did somewhat fall into this startup, they offered my a job, it seemed promising, I do see a bright future for it and I do see it succeeding. But I'm not sure I want to wait it out and take the risk just yet.

I have lots of experience building something myself, and I do enjoy that. But thinking back to my college days I also really really enjoyed working on another team with other developers, which is something I have not done since college. Thats what was appealing to me about startups, was the environment and being surrounded by other developers. I now realize thats not the case until a startup becomes somewhat successful and has funding to make something like that happen.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> An analytical way to look at this would be to compare the "net present value" of the future earnings from the two opportunities. Given that the startup has not raised any funding or revenue yet, and I don't hear you saying anything about how exciting it is, I'd have to guess you have more upside in the training and learnings from getting proper software development mentorship.

</comment><comment><USER5> Where are you living? You could easily make $120k in the Bay Area.

<comment><AUTHOR> I live in Boise, ID. Cost of living isn't quite as high as the bay area. So $120k there might be the equivalent to $84-96k/yr here.</comment></comment>


How to use your full brain when writing code - <AUTHOR> http://chrismm.com/blog/how-to-use-your-full-brain-when-writing-code/? <comment><USER2> I am not kidding or being sarcastic, but let me add another tip for using your "full brain":

aerobic exercise.

If you just take a brisk walk, a quick sprint, or a jog, before you code or intermittently, you'll notice a world of difference.

<comment><USER3> I started doing Ashtanga Mysore style yoga a month and a half ago, and I'm bursting with energy throughout the day. I'm saying this as someone who is 41, has spinal degeneration and is a cancer survivor, and I feel years younger after practicing. It's a more traditional style that is done very early in the morning, and has an exact sequence which is great for those who like structure. The expectation is that you practice every day except Saturday. It's pretty demanding physically, but can be adapted for those who are less fit and flexible. A lot of thought has been put into the design of the sequence, in that each posture and movement is preparation for another movement later in the sequence, so it leads you step by step to do things with your body you wouldn't have guessed you were capable of. The sequence emphasizes both strength and flexibility, and my body is already taking a much nicer shape after only a short period.

<comment><USER4> Is the 6 days a week requirement or is it nice to do? I do basic yoga for 2-3 days a week and I'm generally tired after.

<comment><USER3> I don't think it's a requirement, in that the teacher won't kick you out of class if you don't show up every day, but it's highly encouraged. This is a opinionated and prescribed form of yoga, and the idea is that you practice as close to that prescription as your life will allow. But I haven't detected any pressure or negativity from my teacher toward students that don't show every day.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Perhaps I missed it and the article already covered these, but a few other major tips that I doubt anyone would disagree with:

-Eliminate distractions. Any external stimuli subtract from concentration and "processing power" for your task. Even the possibility of distraction can put your brain on alert for them when they're not present, so best if you can create an environment which is free of distraction generally. This relates not only to your office/work environment, but things like going into DND on your phone and IMs.

-Work in large, contiguous time chunks (and then take breaks; see next). For complex tasks, it takes a while to "spin up". To load all the context, to explore possibility branches of solutions, to implement possible solutions and test them. As with distractions, very short work windows break this problem solving time up and require a re-spin-up period.

-Take breaks between longer work sessions. Taking breaks-- and in particular moving around while on break-- helps prevent fatigue, sustaining efficacy and productivity for longer windows of the day. Taking a break, especially wherein you change your environment (eg walking outside), can also help invigorate problem-solving. Finally, moving around is healthy for both your body and your mind.

I don't think you can make full use of your brain without following all of these as well.

<comment><USER6> [https://freedom.to/freedom](https://freedom.to/freedom) is useful for this if you find yourself checking HN on your phone.

<comment><USER7> What is it? I can't imagine many on HN are going to register for something just to find out what it is.

<comment><USER8> This link is better: [https://freedom.to/](https://freedom.to/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> We should all mimic sleeping dolphins, so we could always use our active heimsphere to approach 100% coding time

Also, to add some neuron info that the article didn't mention:

\- place / grid cells would allow you to use your brain more, easily - see the book _Moonwalking with Einstein_ a book recommended by a friend

\- neural codes are convex- could we use this knowledge somehow?

\- using your full brain is known as an epileptic seizure, iirc..

\- tonic/phasic firing matters a lot as to the effect of neural firing, although I forget as to whether that's a dopamine-only trait..

<comment><USER10> RPN style thinking is also something i feel that helped. Because "thinking" has the inputs on tape/memory already, so its matter of bandwidth and pre- processing.

i.e "lets do the integratation"

becomes

"integration do".

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I would also add "be interested in what you're writing". If you don't care at all for what you're working on, there's little chance of paying full attention.

</comment><comment><USER12> Computer science has a plethora of studies related to OS process scheduling. All of it is directly relevant to human task management. I've never, ever seen in referenced in any management talks/books/etc.

<comment><USER13> At work, I currently have 4-5 different PM's on 4-5 different projects. Each of them has no idea what the others are asking, and I am constantly bombarded with one off tasks via hipchat or in-person requests. The point is not to complain about work, but to agree that management would do well to recognize the importance of process scheduling and queueing, and that a failure to do so is only detrimental to their own objectives.

<comment><USER14> I don't have _that_ many PMs, but when I have multiple people asking me to do simultaneous tasks, I email all of them, asking them to prioritize the list for me. I'm polite about it. And it mostly works out. But I never, ever shy away from doing this.

<comment><USER15> Very good idea - since it both puts the onus on them, and makes them realize the conflicting demands on your time.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I agree with every point. Too bad that, aside from splitting the problem into small tasks, the conditions most software devs work in prevent taking this advice. It is impossible to avoid multitasking in a collaborative open office environment. I can't imagine saying in a standup meeting that I'm just going to work through tutorials and work on memorizing the standard library instead of assigned work.

<comment><USER17> Try it. You might be surprised at the reaction.

Let me be a little more specific, though, because it's trickier than I let on. I prefer working on XP style teams, so I'll use XP style vocabulary here, but in my experience what I'm about to say is pretty universal, so feel free to extrapolate.

One of the most important things for running a successful project is understanding the attention span of your stake holders (which includes customers, managers, etc). You must deliver "user visible functionality" (i.e. things that your stake holders value) at a regular rate. There is a threshold after which if you fail to deliver something valued by the "customer" the project's chance of failure increases. If you regularly cross that threshold, the chances of success can be almost zero.

The actual threshold depends on many factors, but my rule of thumb is 2 weeks. If you don't deliver something of value to the stake holders in 2 weeks, they will get uncomfortable and start thinking about other options. If it happens regularly, then they will constantly be thinking about other options and eventually will chose one of them.

(The corollary of my rule of thumb is that the biggest danger to a project is senior management since they are the ones with the power and responsibility to cancel projects that they think are not going to be successful).

The more you deliver in that window, the happier stake holders will be, but... if you get into a situation where something you deliver turns out not to be complete/satisfactory/whatever it works against you. So if your stake holder ever utters the words, "But I thought we already did that", then it's like missing 2 windows (well, in my experience, more like 1.5, but I'm splitting hairs).

You might be wondering what this has to do with the topic. :-) The problem is that you can't just wander away and study stuff, even if it is going to have a good effect on the project. Similarly, wandering away for a month to gather requirements, or write design, or refactor crappy code, or write a decent build system, or pay back technical debt, or... anyway, it all moves you toward cancellation. This is the _real_ reason waterfall doesn't work IMHO -- stake holders don't have the attention span to deal with the time it takes for things to shake out and so the projects get cancelled.

What this means is that _every thing you do_ must be linked to customer- visible value. Furthermore, it limits the amount of time you can spend on every part. You can't wander away for 2 weeks to learn Rails. But you can _easily_ wander away for 1 or 2 days to learn an aspect of Rails that will help you with the story/task that you are currently working on -- so long as that doesn't push you over the threshold.

If you start delivering stories with customer-visible value every 2 days, for instance, nobody will care if you are spending half of that time doing tutorials, katas, memorising stuff -- whatever you think is productive. You actions are invisible to the customer and they just don't care.

With that in mind, where I always find problems when I see people complaining about this issue is in the work backlog. Usually the stories are organised by technical rather than customer issues. So you'll have a bunch of stories that provide absolutely nothing to the customer and then you will have a story that links it all up gives them a lot -- usually a month or two down the road.

The root cause of this is usually because programmers/PMs try to be efficient and not duplicate work. Instead, identify all of the customer-visible value and try to create a story for each one. Make vertical stripes of functionality that you can deliver at a more measured pace. This will require you to do refactoring between each story because your infrastructure will always be incomplete. However, it allows you to deliver value more regularly and causes the "big red eye of management" to focus its attention elsewhere.

I've already written more than you are likely to read, so I'll stop here. Just let me encourage you a bit more in saying that you have the ability to change things. It's not easy and it takes time, but you can do it if you work patiently toward your goal. Don't get discouraged!

<comment><USER18> Thank you for writing this. How do you figure that I can learn about ..say.. project management or any other tangentially related subject while I code at work (meaning that coding or developing is my main job)

I guess what I want to know is this - can you apply these principles to learn other stuff to get you ahead in life while getting hit on the head with kids responsibilities etc? Pardon - for the ramble and incoherence :)

<comment><USER17> It's a hard question to answer mainly because it depends a lot on the kind of person you are and what your goals are. The answer is definitely "yes", you can learn all these things, but it's always going to be a trade off. In every job there are things that people like to do. If you get really, really good at those things, people will ask you to keep doing those things. Similarly, you can change your job simply by picking up things that nobody else wants to do.

If you are interested in project management, for instance, there are literally hundreds of things you can do: write acceptance criteria for stories, collect data, write daily or weekly reports, etc. Most of these things you can just start doing tomorrow if you feel like it and people will be pleased. For example, if you say, "I'm having difficulty understanding what's going on in the group, so I'm going to write a daily summary of every thing checked into the source repository", everyone will be happy. If it is useful, it will become part of your every day job.

Of course the trade off is time. I spend about 1 hour a day on average collating information for my job. I do it because I've found it effective on other projects. People seem to like it. Nobody asked me to do it, though. The downside is that I have 1 hour less per day for coding. I'm not as effective as a programmer as some people on the team.

You can't escape that math. Don't expect to find a solution that is all upside with no downside. Same for family responsibilities. Do those things because you value them. There will be other people who will not have families and will devote themselves to work. It might seem unfair that they may progress faster/farther in their job than you do, but that's just the way it is. We all make choices.

Hope that helps!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> This may be a little anal but analogies between a typical von Neumann architecture computer and any animal brain are pretty limited. The brain is essentially like some next-gen MIMD processor.

<comment><USER20> I remember once hearing it said that the brain is always compared to the most complex machine we know how to build; before von Neumann architectures, the analogy was punch-card looms, and before punch-card looms, it was clockwork. I can't agree more that these analogies should always be taken with a grain of salt...

<comment><USER19> Well I definitely think that _some_ computational theory of mind is correct. Of course the critical difference between computationalism and clockwork analogies is that we now have formal proof of just how general computation really is. I don't believe that the embodied human mind is capable of more computation than a UTM.

That being said, comparing the brain, any animal's brain, to a commercial Intel or AMD processor is very misleading.

And I guess it's fitting that I compared the brain to a machine we _don 't_ yet know how to build...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> > How to use your full brain when writing code

I'm curious how the parts of my brain responsible for walking, riding a bicycle or telling jokes could be used when writing code.

<comment><USER14> I'm curious why people have to be so darned pedantic. It's not funny nor cute. And it makes it almost impossible to have any sort of enjoyable conversation with a normal person.

<comment><USER22> It's not pedantic, he is directly questioning a core tenant of the article by using examples of where it may break down. It serves a rhetorical purpose.

<comment><USER23> What purpose?

Does he honestly think the author literally believes the parts of the brain involved in locomotion can be used for programming?

It's being pedantic in an unproductive way since no charitable reading of the OP would come away with that conclusion.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> > I like to complement this with memorization of the most difficult concepts, > especially things I don't run into very often while reading. You can use > Anki for this (or any other spaced-repetition software).

Sure enough, I took a look and found this: [http://orgmode.org/worg/org- contrib/org-drill.html](http://orgmode.org/worg/org-contrib/org-drill.html)

</comment><comment><USER25> Something I found helpful are: having enough sleep, familiar music to drown out distraction to put me in the zone.

</comment><comment><USER26> anecdotal but I don't think I can agree with no multitasking rule. I go nuts if I spend on any task for more than 10-15 minutes. I have to switch to something else and come back. How ever I can keep doing this all day with little exhaustion :)

</comment><comment><USER27> I'm surprised they didn't mention Sapir-Whorf in the vocabulary section. I think the implications for coding and UX are huge.

</comment><comment><USER28> Will share one which helped ease down the "getting in the zone" part for me: Use all 10 of your fingers while typing code

<comment><USER29> Writing code with the 100% of your brain is easy; just bang your head in the keyboard repeatedly as I do.</comment></comment>


What it really means when someone says 'Hadoop' - <AUTHOR> http://www.linkedin.com/news?actionBar=&articleID=5572381123670966317&ids=dP4PdzoVc3sScP8NcjwPczsRdiMOd3kTdj4PczsVcPcUe38OdPkRb3sSejoNc3kTdPAPcjAUc3wSdjkIe3gOdzkVe3wPc30MejwOczsRdiMMejwMd3sOcPgRdP4SejwMdPkR&aag=true&freq=weekly&trk=eml-tod2-b-ttl-4&ut=1LV2o36nfCWR41

<comment><USER2> I still don't understand the value add of MapReduce (in it's various implementations, including Hadoop) versus Clustered SQL. I see articles like this one that seem to imply that there is a niche for MapReduce for tasks like simple string search on super large data sets: [http://gigaom.com/2009/04/14/mapreduce-vs-sql-its-not-one- or...](http://gigaom.com/2009/04/14/mapreduce-vs-sql-its-not-one-or-the- other/). It just seems odd that people are so quick to throw away 40+ years of research on how to structure relational data and how to optimize queries against large data sets.

<comment><USER3> Hadoop is free for 400 (or n) computers. Let's say you need 100 computers (full time) to process the equivalent clustered query in Oracle, given the time needed to get the formatted data. How much do the licenses for that cost? (And if it's a free system, you're still going to have to do an ETL job, so why not ETL it to a free solution?)

You need to process a couple terabytes of data, but you only need to do it once a month. However, even the highly tuned SQL will bring the system to its knees. So, 90% of the time really expensive servers are idling because of these peak processing needs. Once a month. (And Oracle isn't going to be available on a cloud service.)

So, yeah, if someone had a free/cheap SQL solution for these kinds of ETL datasets that was able to handle these embarrassingly parallel problems, people might be interested. Perhaps you are aware of solutions I am not.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Can a mod change the url to the unframed version?</comment>


Google Has Figured Out How to Halt The Ravages of Time - <AUTHOR> http://searchengineland.com/timing-is-everything-how-google-staged-a-benevolent-smear-campaig-93106

<comment><USER2> posted yesterday, not much discussion <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3002009></comment>


Ask HN: Making money from a JavaScript library? - <AUTHOR> Is it possible to make money by making a quality JS library and monetizing it either through direct sales (preferably) or some other way?<p>Are the IP risks too big or can they be mitigated by using obfuscation? <comment><USER2> Of course, it is possible. There are many companies which sell JavaScript libraries and related services. In my own field (of JS-based rich-text editors) there are at least a couple of companies which produce their own products and live from that. I'm not sure if you'd still consider them as libraries, but I'll come to that.

As in any business, the most important aspect is finding customers. First of all, you need to have an idea and then a product. It needs to be really good unless you have some exceptional marketing and sales skills ;).

Then, you'll need to find potential customers. You can do that directly or promote yourself in various ways. Many companies open source their products or parts of their products. This may attract a lot of attention and makes you and your software more recognizable. If you open source a big part of your product you also won't have a problem with obfuscating the code – it's available out there anyway.

But how to make money if you open sourced everything? That's why I'm talking about a product, not a library. Source code is not everything (unless it's a really simple thing, but then you wouldn't sell it anyway). You can propose additional support, commercial licenses, knowledge and experience (in various ways such as custom development or your assistance). Some developers also try to crowd fund their projects on services like [https://www.patreon.com/](https://www.patreon.com/) or [https://gratipay.com/](https://gratipay.com/) but you need a really big community to live from that.

So, if you want to make money, then in most cases you should start thinking about a product, not a library itself. You need to be prepared that a big fraction of your time will be spent on things other than coding. This is tough for many developers.

Good luck! :)

<comment><USER3> We recently integrated npm into Gratipay so companies can pay for their package.json:

[https://gratipay.news/integrating- npm-39333109419d](https://gratipay.news/integrating-npm-39333109419d) [https://gratipay.news/pay-for-your-package-json- cb07341445ca](https://gratipay.news/pay-for-your-package-json-cb07341445ca)

If you claim your npm packages on Gratipay then you'll be ready as we start bringing companies online to pay:

[https://gratipay.com/on/npm/?flow=receive](https://gratipay.com/on/npm/?flow=receive)</comment></comment>


Generate music from your voice - <AUTHOR> http://research.microsoft.com/~dan/mysong/

<comment><USER2> By singing?

Actually this was really cool and would be fun to play with.

</comment><comment><USER3> The technology allows you to create "Automatic Accompaniment for Vocal Melodies". When I first saw the "Generate music from your voice" I was hoping someone created some technology that would allow one to just read the lyrics and have the system synthesize the singing part.

<comment><AUTHOR> It'll be interesting if the tech progresses enough that people can be entirely self produced with little instrument playing ability. I wonder if that would change the music scene much?

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Kinda fun looking. Seems like it relies pretty heavily on singing well and on pitch without accidentally changing key. One hour of American Idol'll point out how few people have that ability.

</comment><comment><USER5> Feature request: Guitar, organ etc.... think casio piano - in tune with your voice. (perhaps a add on to all electric keyboards?)

Teaching tool?

Microsoft?

</comment><comment><USER6> Such things already existed.</comment>


Show HN: Bootstrap 3 and PHP put together - <AUTHOR> https://www.phpstrap.in

<comment><USER2> I am sorry to be negative, but have the author heard about tools such as composer..? Or Symfony?

<comment><AUTHOR> I have, but I'm making something different than a framework.</comment></comment>


Music on the Cloud. Here we go again - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/31/technology/personaltech/31pogue.html?src=busln <comment><USER2> Why doesn't iTunes have this?</comment>


The myth of self-control - <AUTHOR> http://www.vox.com/science-and-health/2016/11/3/13486940/self-control-psychology-myth <comment><USER2> Anyone who wants to call "self control" a myth needs to explain why some people are good at Go/No-Go but others aren't. Control for whatever you want, your still going to find some people perform better on impulse control then others.

I think what this article really want to say is, "'try harder' solves nothing." And I couldn't agree more strongly with that. You cannot loose weight by just telling yourself you're going to apply more "self control." Changing your environment and training habits are way way more effective.</comment>


Adrian Frutiger has died - <AUTHOR> http://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/master-of-the-univers_swiss-font-legend-adrian-frutiger-dies/41659284 <comment><USER2> It's interesting to compare typefaces of road signs across Europe. Frutiger is pretty nice:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frutiger_(typeface)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frutiger_\(typeface\))

I like (am used to?) the Italian one too:

[https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfabeto_Normale](https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfabeto_Normale) (derived from [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transport_(typeface)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transport_\(typeface\)) )

I don't much care for the Austrian/German ones though:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DIN_1451](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DIN_1451) \- apparently it was designed by committee.

<comment><USER3> Hey, don't hate on DIN :)

For a font designed in 1931, it's impressively timeless. It doesn't seem to communicate any particular era or emotion, so it suits almost anything especially in digital form.

Both Google's Roboto and Apple's new San Francisco display fonts seem heavily inspired by DIN (just IMHO of course).

<comment><USER4> > "It doesn't seem to communicate any particular era or emotion"

I'm not wholly sure about that; the strict adherence to line thickness and limited set of curvature angles make me feel like it was adapted from the "font" created by necessity when using road-painting equipment to write asphalt road signs. It which lends the font a "we couldn't do better in one case so let's at least unify on something" feeling that's slightly modernist, similar to logos from the 70s that use unnecessary all-caps to look "digital" because they work with green-screens that don't display lower-case.

<comment><USER5> I can't give you chapter and verse on this, but when the first autobahns were built, they were composed of straight sections and constant curvature bends. This was perceived by engineers to be the rational way. Landscape designers (who were also involved) eventually convinced the engineers to adopt more sinuous curves, which of course also create transitions (clothoid or Cornu spiral sections) which made the roads easier to drive on.

<comment><USER5> Found a reference: Driving Germany: The Landscape of the German Autobahn. p.130 onwards.

<comment><USER6> [https://books.google.nl/books?id=Kq_Ys4BlA6cC&lpg=PP1&hl=nl&...](https://books.google.nl/books?id=Kq_Ys4BlA6cC&lpg=PP1&hl=nl&pg=PA129#v=onepage&q&f=false) (starts on p. 129 really)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> The article mentions Univers as his best known typeface. Although that is probably true historically, I think many HN readers would be much more familiar with Avenir.

Avenir ships with OS X and iOS, and is widely used for startup landing pages, among a million other things (Avenir seems to be somehow very close to the 2010s zeitgeist).

Posted yesterday was this beautiful product site, of course set in Avenir:

[http://www.notion.so](http://www.notion.so)

RIP Mr Frutiger, who perhaps did more for sans serif than anyone else since Eric Gill.

<comment><USER7> > [http://www.notion.so/](http://www.notion.so/)

I love more than anything else, sites that treat me as a second-class citizen for using a non-proprietary browser. They must have so many users already, that they don't mind alienating a large portion of their audience.

<comment><USER8> > treat me as a second-class citizen

I think you're being a little excessively hyperbolic. They don't support your browser yet and state as much - that's hardly malicious or demeaning to you. They also promise support is coming soon. It's a very early phase product that uses a lot of newer and less universal APIs. It's not that they have so many users that they don't care - rather, it's that they're still beta testing and haven't been able to devote the resources yet. I really fail to see the problem here.

<comment><USER9> You only get one chance to make a first impression, etc.

I have a similar antipathy for Quora for requiring facebook logins to view their content (not actually theirs, their users' content) that came up during search results.

I believe they've now dropped the facebook login requirement, and I think they now show a lot of content from organic search traffic, but I plan on ignoring them anyway for as long as possible.

<comment><USER8> Oh, I don't disagree that the specific method followed by this site is garbage. I just felt that the comment I was replying to was overanalyzing the motives behind a relatively innocuous (if poorly thought out) piece of content.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Frutiger's personality and work are sensitively depicted in two documentaries that are worth watching: "Adrian Frutiger - Typographer" (1999) [0] and "The Man of Black and White: Adrian Frutiger" (2005) [1].

"Just My Type", Simon Garfield's wildly popular book on typefaces, has a chapter titled "What is it about the Swiss?" which has a whole section dedicated to Frutiger. [2]

Frutiger's design philosophy is beautifully reflected in this quote: "If you remember the shape of your spoon at lunch, it has to be the wrong shape. The spoon and the letter are tools; one to take food from the bowl, the other to take information off the page... When it is a good design, the reader has to feel comfortable because the letter is both banal and beautiful."

Edit: Frutiger did a very detailed interview during the 1998 ATypI conference that was published in the graphic design journal, Eye, in 1999 [3]. Long read, but worth it to understand the man and his work.

Linotype has published an excellent obituary [4].

"Adrian Frutiger Typefaces: The Complete Works" is available on amazon.com [5] and amazon.co.uk [6]. A sneak peak is on ISSUU [7].

[0] [http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0426872/](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0426872/)

[1] [http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0934510/](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0934510/)

[2] [http://www.betterworldbooks.com/just-my-type- id-1592407463.a...](http://www.betterworldbooks.com/just-my-type- id-1592407463.aspx)

[3] [http://www.eyemagazine.com/feature/article/reputations- adria...](http://www.eyemagazine.com/feature/article/reputations-adrian- frutiger)

[4] [http://www.linotype.com/720-34866/adrianfrutigerremembered.h...](http://www.linotype.com/720-34866/adrianfrutigerremembered.html)

[5] [http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/3038215260/](http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/3038215260/)

[6] [http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/3038215260/](http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/3038215260/)

[7] [http://issuu.com/birkhauser.ch/docs/adrian-frutiger- typeface...](http://issuu.com/birkhauser.ch/docs/adrian-frutiger-typefaces)

<comment><USER11> Do you know where to find them? Preferably free, if they're on an archive somewhere or similar. They seem to be in german as well, am I correct in this?

<comment><USER10> "Adrian Frutiger - Typographer" (1999) was released in English, French, German and Italian. It was released in DVD format in 2004. It's listed on amazon.de [0] but seems to be out of stock at the moment. It seems to be available in libraries across Germany and Switzerland [1].

"The Man of Black and White: Adrian Frutiger" (2005) was released in Swiss German and German in DVD format. It's also listed on amazon.de [2] but seems to be out of stock at the moment. The San Francisco Public Library [3] seems to have a copy though.

Sebastian Rohner of R.Films shot an interview with Adrian Frutiger at his home in Switzerland in 2007. It's available in German on YouTube [4].

[0] [http://www.amazon.de/Adrian-Frutiger- Schriftengestalter/dp/B...](http://www.amazon.de/Adrian-Frutiger- Schriftengestalter/dp/B0007W9DPE)

[1] [https://www.worldcat.org/title/adrian-frutiger- schriftengest...](https://www.worldcat.org/title/adrian-frutiger- schriftengestalter-ein-portrat/oclc/315110710/editions)

[2] [http://www.amazon.de/Adrian-Frutiger-Mann-Schwarz- Weiss/dp/3...](http://www.amazon.de/Adrian-Frutiger-Mann-Schwarz- Weiss/dp/3722500494/)

[3] [https://www.worldcat.org/title/mann-von-schwarz-und-weiss- ad...](https://www.worldcat.org/title/mann-von-schwarz-und-weiss-adrian- frutiger/oclc/308433836)

[4] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ipGFasprntg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ipGFasprntg)

<comment><USER11> Thank you for being so thorough and informative though I seemingly won't get hold of these films. After reading the comment thread in the "playing with pigs" article, this is a ray of sunshine.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> The article states that some of his fonts are highly legible at distances and thus used for some road signs. I'm curious, is there an objective way to determine whether one font is more legible than another, or is it purely subjective? Obviously some fonts are clearly more legible than others, but between the "legible fonts," can one say objectively that one is more legible than another? Can a computer create a font that is the "most" objectively legible?

<comment><USER13> It can, and is objectively measured and tested.

Here is a great article in the NY Times magazine about the creation of a new font, Clearview, for highway signage: [http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/12/magazine/12fonts-t.html?pa...](http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/12/magazine/12fonts-t.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0)

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Gill Sans and Zapf's Optima were the first big humanist fonts, but they are really best used sparsely. Zapf died earlier this year, by the way.

But with Adrian Frutiger's Frutiger the whole world was blown open. Helvetica had a predecessor fairly like it in Akzidenz Grotesk, but Frutiger was something else entirely. Grotesques had been around for decades prior to Helvetica. Frutiger was a revolution. I and everybody should know that our visual world is markedly different because of Adrian Frutiger.

Right now, I am on a Windows tablet. Segoe UI, Tahoma, Arial, Verdana, Calibri, Microsoft's (and Matthew Carter's in particular) font efforts here were, but for Arial, so very much direct descendants, if not copies, of Frutiger's Frutiger. The default font in Microsoft Word must count Frutiger as it's most influential ancestor, bar none.

On Mac OS X, Lucida Sans is just the same, carrying Frutiger's DNA utterly. And on Linux, Bitstream Vera is just the same.

And it's not just Frutiger. Mac OS X's new default font, San Francisco is very much Univers, with some DIN. Univers is the designer's default font of choice for anywhere that Helvetica isn't chosen. I love its condensed form, as used here by Australia Post, and its numbering system was influential too and expressed an incredible range of variation within a single family. It is the ultimate tight font.

Avenir was a wonderful reinterpretation of Futura, Serifa is the most sensible slab serif, and the only generally acceptable one next to Rockwell... and that's nothing to say of the cross-pollination of his Frutiger with Univers and Helvetica. Think Roboto and basically half of what's on Google Fonts.

His influence on Erik Spiekermann, who drew some fonts that blew the visual landscape open in the 90s and early 2000s is insane when combined with the dutch Thesis and Scala. His influence on every fixed width font that has become popular on computers after Courier New is similarly huge.

Adrian Frutiger is, with no doubt, the person that drew our languages the most in the past century, Akzidenz Grotesk coming from 1896. His shapes influenced every comment you read here more than any other person in the past century. He made things legible and beautiful. Even for computers he did, with OCR-B.

I think that now with us in a post-Frutiger era, it's going to take a very, very long while for someone to come along and change our written language and visual world with such a bombshell as he did. If ever again - that is a very serious question.

We are now entering an area where there's fewer new ideas, but refinement and cross-pollination. The landscape seems like it's settling, with typefaces like Gotham and San Francisco and Roboto being very evolutionary... but with not that much of a way forward? There's been few new strands of DNA in the typeface world since Spiekermann's Meta. (and its very contemporary siblings Thesis and Scala)

Let's hope that like the Dalai Lama, we can find Frutiger reincarnated in a new form so that in a few decades he may once again shine us a light and bring to us a genuine future, like his Frutiger had brought upon us before.

Either that or we just A-B test signage typefaces out the wazoo and see if something as amazing as that somehow emerges a million generations from now, possibly even within the confines of the Latin alphabet. DIN 1451, which had some influence an Frutiger, isn't spent yet, I don't think. Meta probably is spent by now. Gill Sans is getting close, because of Gotham. Frutiger is getting there :/

We now live in a post-Frutiger world. That's kind of scary, if you think about it.

Whatever comes, I hope to at least see the next Frutiger's work and what it means for mankind before I die. I expect it to be interesting.

<comment><USER15> > Zapf died earlier this year, by the way.

Somehow, I missed that news.

Damn, the world of typography lost two of its biggest visionaries this summer alone.

I always preferred Zapf's fonts to Frutiger's by a wide margin (I always favor serif fonts over sans serifs), but they were both brilliant men, and typography won't be the same without either.

<comment><USER10> >> Zapf died earlier this year, by the way.

> Somehow, I missed that news.

I did submit the news to HN, but it received no attention, alas.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9692624](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9692624)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I'm curious about the comment in the caption of the portrait in this story, specifically that harmonious typefaces are only achievable by hand. Anyone have any more details about this? Hopefully there are many aspects of design that are still solely within the realm of people, but this may be slightly shrinking every day.

<comment><USER8> To clarify, I believe that his stance was that while digital reproductions of a finished font are satisfactory, the creative process and the original design of a typeface must always be done by hand. You can see some of his hand-drawn works here, on the Zurich University of the Arts' website:

[http://www.emuseum.ch/view/objects/asimages/search@?criteria...](http://www.emuseum.ch/view/objects/asimages/search@?criteria=frutiger&rg=Objects,,0&sm=\[Objects,%20Exhibitions,%20Sites,%20People,%20MediaModule\])

Here are some particularly interesting ones:

[http://www.emuseum.ch/view/objects/asitem/search@/52/title-a...](http://www.emuseum.ch/view/objects/asitem/search@/52/title- asc?criteria=frutiger&rg=Objects,,0&sm=\[Objects,%20Exhibitions,%20Sites,%20People,%20MediaModule\])

[http://www.emuseum.ch/view/objects/asitem/search@/65/title-a...](http://www.emuseum.ch/view/objects/asitem/search@/65/title- asc?criteria=frutiger&rg=Objects,,0&sm=\[Objects,%20Exhibitions,%20Sites,%20People,%20MediaModule\])

[http://www.emuseum.ch/view/objects/asitem/search@/114/title-...](http://www.emuseum.ch/view/objects/asitem/search@/114/title- asc?criteria=frutiger&rg=Objects,,0&sm=\[Objects,%20Exhibitions,%20Sites,%20People,%20MediaModule\])

</comment></comment><comment> mark-r First Hermann Zapf in June, now Adrian Frutiger. As a font geek, I am mourning.

</comment><comment><USER17> Any links to the design philosophy behind the Frutiger font?

<comment><USER5> If Wikipedia doesn't satisfy you, maybe try the "complete works" book. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frutiger_(typeface)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frutiger_\(typeface\))

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> very sad to hear - he at least achieved the status where people all over the world are going to miss and remember him

<comment><USER19> Exactly, and yet people look at me weird when I express that being remembered is a worthy pursuit of one's existence, and that the enjoyment of solitary creation is comparable to that of hanging out having some more socially accepted form of 'fun'</rant>

<comment><USER20> Yes, assuming it is being remembered for something other humans appreciate and are grateful for (as is the case here).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I wonder what font will be on his epitaph.</comment>


The short, tormented life of computer genius Phil Katz (2000) - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbsdocumentary.com/library/CONTROVERSY/LAWSUITS/SEA/katzbio.txt <comment><USER3> For some people conscious existence is too burdensome, uncomfortable, full of anxiety, outright maddening or some combination thereof. You see this in everyday life too, albeit in benign quantities - watch a kid after you tell him he can do nothing for the next hour.

I had read Phil Katz's story before and I read it again today - it wasn't any less painful the second time around. I think if we were to debug it - <USER2> doesn't seem to be any one unmistakable conclusion, rather a combination. It would all depend on how severely one reacts to their emotional trauma. Some people are numbed, some are able to move on, some find healthy diversions in hobbies, people, achievements and some like Phil just plain fail to function well and have to resort to drugs and alcohol in order to run away from the living nightmare. I think at some point existence becomes rather more painful than death for some - that's the only way you're able to kill yourself without regard.

Humans are puzzling as a species - all the years of conditioning, the everyday conflicts and contradictions we have to face, the constant need for asserting our existence through external means, the need for relations, the child/parent and then spouse systems and all the things that can go wrong with them, all the other uncertainties - amazingly many live through this but some just can't escape the dread.

<comment><USER4> > For some people conscious existence is too burdensome, uncomfortable, full > of anxiety, outright maddening or some combination thereof.

Reading this gives me immediate anxiety. I have times during the day where just seeing things and being alive is almost unreal, like I can't deal with, and the thought of doing this for N number of years more is overwhelming. As I'm getting older life is just even more surreal, I sometimes wonder if I have the mental fortitude to make it to old age. This isn't a cry for help, you just touched a nerve with that sentence.

<comment><USER5> Phew, I'm not alone. Word for word, to the letter.

<comment><USER6> Probably more common than you think.

One old saw has it that when a man is starving he forgets even the urgent promptings of a full bladder. A newer old saw claims that religion is the opiate of the masses (with its uncoined analog regarding fetishism & the ruling classes).

The quoted OP railed against wasted time and effort, but his views on the despiritualization of the modern man are not clear. A non contemporary would likely diagnose a 'spiritual crisis' for the existential angst of the uncommon non-aristocratic unbelieving modern man.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I'm not knocking anyone that talks about emotional pain as a reason to drink, but I want to offer an alternative theory alcoholism based on my experience. Many if not most people have settled on the theory of escape from a painful existence as an explanation, including many alcoholics. I've been battling alcohol since I was a teenager and now I'm almost 60. I've been in and out of rehab, lots of therapy and psychiatry, lots of sober time, a family with grown kids, a successful career and yet my most recent relapse almost killed me. More on that at the end.

Alcoholism is beyond thought and emotion. It operates at another level. It takes Kings and Queens. It takes happy family men, while often skipping abused children who grow up to be unhappy adults that can't hold a family together. It takes spiritual and religious leaders such as Alan Watts. The list of great, productive and seemingly happy people who are destroyed by alcohol is a long one. My theory is that is a genetic glitch that allows alcohol to get hooked into the autonomic nervous system. It's telling in "Leaving Las Vegas" a woman tells Cage's character to quit drinking and he replies "why don't you tell me to stop breathing?" Carl Sagan liked to talk about our reptilian brain. That's the way I look at it. When the lizard brain wants a drink, it's going to get a drink. Luckily for me, it's not all the time. The urge comes and goes (sometimes for years.) The gene seems to run in families. If it is cured, my bet it will be through genetic therapy.

I'm not saying that resolving emotional issues doesn't make it easier to stay sober. Many things make it easier to stay sober. Sometimes I just go somewhere where I can't get it. That helps. It's why a lot of guys stay in the Navy. They have productive sober time at sea. Finding other activities and diversions certainly help. I like to program. I've often stayed sober by programming.

My last relapse almost killed me because I'm finding as I have become older, my ability to fight it is greatly weakened. On top of that, I go into a trance-like state where I stay I will stay drunk for days and weeks at a time unless someone who knows me intervenes. That is terrible on the body and as the body weakens, the ability to resist weakens. The downward spiral can be quick and brutal.

<comment><USER8> You aren't alone. Should you ever want to chat/commiserate/pair program, you can contact me through my HN account.

I don't have it all, though I have a lot, but I still find myself continuously drawn to a side that defies my own logic. I both glad and saddened to hear that I'm not alone.

<comment><USER7> Thanks. You are not alone. I meet people like me in AA and get coffee with them. I don't go now because I don't believe the program as designed actually works, at least for me. I also wasn't making connections at my favorite meeting. I may try another.

<comment><USER9> If you would like, contact me via my email. I think we have some issues in common.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> One of the most heartbreaking stories of of the tech world, and one that comes with a lot of bad blood. Be sure to watch Jason Scott's documentary clip on the ARC vs PKARC battle:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YiaM5MT1Ok8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YiaM5MT1Ok8)

I admit that I've always wondered what a dramatic film based on this story would look like. It has all of the highs and lows of a movie, and it would be worth retelling for both the lessons it has to teach but also the important role in computer history Katz held.

<comment><USER11> Thanks for sharing this link, in lieu of watching that I wouldn't have had any idea Phil stole SEA's code to create pkarc/pkzip.

I still remember running the self-extracting pkz204g.exe on MS-DOS, and never heard of SEA or encountered their software. That's really unfortunate.

<comment><USER10> I don't disagree with you on this, but I just want to clarify something: Katz ripped off ARC, that much is clear. But on the other hand, ZIP was a brand-new format that had some differences from ARC. Among those differences is that Katz made the format open, something SEA hadn't done with ARC. This helped ensure its broad uptake as a de facto standard that's still used to this day.

I don't think what Katz did in SEA saga is worth defending, but I think we have to delineate the two formats. As Phil Becker of eSoft says in the clip, the reason that Katz's software ultimately won out was that he was more adept as a businessman—and the open nature of the ZIP format was a good example of that.

<comment><USER12> Don't forget, that this was also in the middle of the various look-and-feel lawsuits that were going on at the time. Lotus vs. Paperback Software, Lotus vs. Borland, Apple vs. Microsoft, Stac Electronics vs. Microsoft, etc.

Also, remember that PKarc was popular because it was faster than Arc. The feeling in the BBS community at the time were feeling a bit of rage, that a superior product was being killed through the courts. So when PKzip came out, which was not only faster, but had a better compression ratio, combined with the general sentiment in the community that were fed up with look-and-feel lawsuits, doing a mass conversion from arc to zip was also a form of public protest.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> A tragic tale, and a reminder that intelligence and business success are no replacement for mental health.

Even in the BBC's account, the tone of the writing seems to present a lot of warning signs and developing problems as just a genius' wacky eccentricities. If you require substances in order to function, can't maintain social relationships or struggle with harmful lifestyles, these aren't mere character traits, they're symptoms of real and treatable illnesses. Presenting these things as "the dark side of being smart" is a popular story, but its harmful in the long run.

<comment><USER14> The article is not affiliated with the BBC -- it's published on bbsdocumentaries.com.

<comment><USER13> Oops, good catch- one letter makes a substantial difference!

Should have wondered why a BBC documentary was being presented in plaintext format, anyway...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> The article kind of glosses over the battle with System Enhancement Associates. As a sysop (long time since I used that word), ARC was extremely popular. Then PKarc came out and it generated files that were more compact but kept the extension .ARC. SEA's product couldn't unpack those. So their product got the reputation as the one that didn't work.

The lawsuit was extremely unpopular given that they were both shareware products and the older, more established company was suing the company with a better product.

It wasn't clear now or then what else SEA could have done.

<comment><USER16> Couldn't they have just made him an offer too good to refuse to buy PKarc? I haven't read up on the background so perhaps they already tried this. But it seems like that's the "big company" playbook. At least if you're substantially bigger than your competitor.

<comment><USER15> There are some programmers on Hacker News who probably are paid more than I'm guessing both companies combined made. As I remember it (could be wrong now), SEA was two programmers and PKWare was Phil Katz (and his mom).

"The leaked agreement document revealed that under the settlement terms, the defendants had paid the plaintiff $22,500 for past royalty payments and $40,000 for expense reimbursements."

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phil_Katz](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phil_Katz)

<comment><USER17> I was about to say the same thing. For all the hard work, risks, stress, and high drama involved, we're talking about fairly trivial amounts of money for both parties.

To put it in perspective, the royalty payment that constitutes the settlement is less than what the most people pay for a new car or the average cost of a wedding in the U.S.

Given the leaked documents about the settlement (per Wikipedia) and knowing what most people pay for shareware (which is zero), I doubt the article's claim that Katz had a "multimillion-dollar company". This makes his struggles and story even sadder.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I just lost my best mate from university to alcohol. Growing up in Britain, this is not my first friend I've lost because of alcohol. I'm in tears... I've struggled with drinking too much myself, this hits very close to home.

<comment><USER19> As somebody who has watched people struggle and seen them fail and succeed, I can relate. Also a Brit, also like a pint. Helped people who were hitting the alcho-pops at 8am (doesn't smell like booze on the breath, see?).

I'm p7r on twitter and reddit. If you ever want to chat, let me know, I'll follow you back, we can DM, or just PM me on reddit. It's a sincere offer: I hope in the morning you're feeling more optimistic and know you're not alone and there are people who give a fuck.

The things that make us able to do amazing things are also the things that make us do terrible things to ourselves. We should talk about that more as a community.

<comment><USER20> I've stopped and failed drinking too many times to count.

My psychiatrist told me flat out, "Don't even try to stop on you're own. It's just too f---ing dangerous." I used that terrible advice for years. I kept on drinking.

I went to A.A., and just coudn't stomach it, on so many levels.

I wasen't going to spend my last $15 grand on a expensive rehab.

I did taper off around ten years ago. It took a few weeks. I knew it would be dangerous to just stop. I did everything the experts told me not to do; like have alcohol around the house, and hang around people who drink.

We all drink for different reasons. I felt I was drinking to control my anxiety; and much of the time I was self-medicating. I tapered down to a few drinks a day--I finally got down to one, or no drinks.

My point is if anyone reading this is trying to stop drinking, and the status quo advice just isn't working, if I could taped down, I honestly think most people can.

(Try not to drink hard alcohol. That really did a number on my body. When I went back to wine, and beer; It was only then could I begin to even think about tapering down to no drinks. I'm not giving advice. I'm just stating what worked for me. I really thought I was hopeless. My father, and grandfather both died from liver tumors that metastasized into cancer. Both were big drinkers. I didn't think I had a chance in hell. Plus--I had a nervous breakdown in graduate school, which turned into generalized anxiety. I still drink, but it's not much. I'm not the bloated mess I used to be. My life is still not great, but it's not due to alcohol.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Very sad story. The guy's initials are immortalized in the magic number of the zip file format, the bytes of which are

        0x50 0x4b 0x03 0x04

The values 0x50 0x4b are 'P' 'K' in ASCII.

Note also that every Java JAR file is also a ZIP file, so they all begin with the same magic number.

<comment><USER22> Windows executables start with "MZ", for Mark Zbikowski.

Edit: fixed the name

<comment><USER23> I tried googling this but nothing came up until I stumbled across [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DOS_MZ_executable](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DOS_MZ_executable) which says it stands for _Mark Zbikowski_ (which is supported by a quick Google of that name).

<comment><USER22> You're right, I mis-remembered it. Thanks for the correction!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> As someone who is in recovery, this story always hits close to home. The anxiety, guilt, and paranoia that comes with addiction is brutal. I was on the verge on losing everything including two young daughters. What a fucking horrible disease.

</comment><comment><USER25> I remember reading this a few years ago, and it touched me as it is touching me now again.

I don't remember computers without pkzip/pkunzip. They've always been around, many copies on floppies containing games and other software, maybe just in case someone ever found a computer without them.

My school computers also had them, and we quickly learned there wasn't any benifit of compressing a compressed file. We had pointless discussions about comparisons with arj and rar without even knowing how they worked.

</comment><comment><USER26> I lost sone friends the same way, alcoholism and mental illnesses seem to be common in my generation. I lost my best friend in 1999 when he bought a shotgun and ended his life. I tried to do all I could to help him but he shut me and everyone out for months until he killed himself.

I've been suicidal myself. It is something not talked out, but it needs to be talked about eventually. Suicide is taking some of the best out of this industry and stress and depression and anxiety mixed with drugs and/or alcohol can lead to these weird behaviors and then suicide unless they are lucky enough to get professional help and the right psychiatrist and medicine and therapy.

I'm on disability and can't work yet, and I have to learn how to program all over again with different languages as what I know is so outdated except for theories.

</comment><comment><USER27> > But even as Windows-based "zip" products nibbled into PKWare's sales

Anyone remember Niko Mak? I heard whisper numbers back in the late 90s of high six figure monthly licensing revenue from companies that were desperate to remain BSA legal (their employees downloaded WinZip for personal use and exposed businesses to legal liability for using unlicensed software). He seems to have disappeared, as he rightly deserves. I assume he changed his name and lives on a private island. I still get WinZip marketing spam on my old email account. Last I remember, they were at version 67...

</comment><comment><USER28> I wonder how he would have reacted if he had lived to see the integration of his ZIP file format into Windows itself, starting with Windows XP in 2001.

<comment><USER29> I don't think he'd have a problem with it considering he released the specification for the Zip format freely[1].

[1] [https://pkware.cachefly.net/webdocs/casestudies/APPNOTE.TXT](https://pkware.cachefly.net/webdocs/casestudies/APPNOTE.TXT)

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> Wow that was difficult to read. Not that I'm an alcoholic but I can relate to some of the things he was going through.

<comment><USER31> Yeah, read it about 3 or 4 times now, and it always seems to be late at night (UK here) when I read it. Here I am, while my family sleeps, working away in the quiet solitude of night. Luckily though, I'm drinking tea, not alcohol.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> Off topic, but what was so special about the "zip" file over a ".tar.Z" file, especially that it already existed when ZIP came out?

<comment><USER33> \- It had a table of contents. You can list the contents of a ZIP file, or even extract individual files, without having to decompress the whole thing. (Which was a particularly big deal back in the 90s, when extracting a large archive would take a while.)

\- You could update an archive in place. Not incredibly useful, but certainly nifty.

\- It had support for multi-disk archives. Again, big deal in the 90s.

Finally, last but not least: it existed in the PC world. Ports of software between UNIX and PC systems were rare back then, and were made more difficult by the fact that the software would have to run in a segmented (16-bit) x86 environment.

<comment><USER34> This is the perfect answer. The fact that you could split zip files across several diskettes was _huge_.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> A sad outcome. I will more remember Phil Katz for brazenly copying SEA code to create the basis for his initial success - PKARC. His greatest achievement in my opinion was succeeding in convincing a whole community of programmers, that he was the victim, and not "evil" SEA.

</comment><comment><USER36> Wow this is the first time I've heard this story or heard of Phil Katz. I grew up in Milwaukee and went to UWM as well so the familiarities about hearing about someone like Phil is pretty incredible and sad.

</comment><comment><USER32> Also, as far as I know the ZIP file format wasn't patented.

<comment><USER37> File format no, compression yes [https://www.google.com/patents/US5051745](https://www.google.com/patents/US5051745)

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phil_Katz](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phil_Katz)

</comment><comment><USER39> Literally the first letter of this is a typo. Sad story though.

</comment><comment><USER40> Because this is an old post and not someone who is recently deceased, I do not feel what I am about to say is in poor taste.

I don't want to see the idea of the loner computer hacker be idealized any longer. Mr Robot, while a clever and more accurate representation of tech than its predecessors, still leans on the troubled genius trope. My main gripe is how software developers are dehumanized into masochistic agents of hyper productivity. It's unhealthy, it's exploitive, and it's simply not true.

Silicon Valley loves stories like Phil Katz because it gives them a pass to treat up-and-coming coders horribly. 90+ hour workweeks, death marches, and insane deadlines not only leads to burnout, it results in poor work.

Longevity and balance and much more noble pursuits in the tech world. As DHH used to say, put away the Superman cape. We don't need heroics, we need sane, well-rested creatives who enjoy their work. If you want real heroes, look at men & women who are in their 70's and 80's who are still banging out lines of code.

<comment><USER19> Katz's story is perhaps actually an antidote to that: he worked crazy hours much of the time, and ended up dead at 37.

What's interesting for me is that many geeks I've worked with have real issues in some regard, in a way that non-geeks seem to find a way to make entertaining (IT Crowd, Big Bang Theory), or simply think is disturbingly sad (the loner in the basement stereotype).

The truth is the things that make us great geeks can also make us a little self-destructive, and we should probably as a community talk about that some more.

Spending your formative years as an outsider and then finding yourself as an adult a highly in-demand insider is potentially damaging. It's compounded when - as many of us do - we realise that social anxiety can dissipate with alcohol and use of other drugs.

We've all watched it. Some of us have done it. We need to be a bit more open about discussing it, I think.

Thinking about going first and writing a blog this weekend, but man, it'll be emotionally raw for me, and possibly cringe-inducing for others...

<comment><USER41> I definitely get the sense that this was a situation where a guy made too much money way too fast. Like almost overnight.

Reading between the lines, it sounds like he had been pent up, and when an effectively unlimited budget reared its head, it open the floodgates for so many bottled up urges.

By the time he had graduated to drunk driving convictions, other habits had been so firmly established that he was never going back to his old life.

It reads like a medical study of addiction models in animals. When granted unlimited push-button access to an addictive stimulus they push the button compulsively, without stopping and kill themselves from sheer lack of self control.

And about that writing of the tell-all cringe blog. I'd reconsider if I were you. Definitely do some writing. Write on paper. Not on a computer. Not on the internet. Lock it away, and then proof read it when you're in the best possible mood, and try to imagine how it would change your mood to realize others had read it, and cringed over it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> Jesus fucking Christ

</comment><comment><USER43> Short version: alcohol.

<comment><USER44> I think that's a bit of an insensitive summary.

<comment><USER45> Seems to be what all commenters above are focusing on though.

(and thus completely miss the point)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> Always a good cautionary tail.</comment>


Airbnb Goes After Business Travelers with New Booking Tool - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-04-28/airbnb-goes-after-business-travelers-with-new-booking-tool <comment><USER2> Very interesting!

Please take a look at [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14220925](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14220925)</comment>


Dying in Code (RIP Chandler) - <AUTHOR> http://whydoeseverythingsuck.com/2008/01/rip-mitch-kapors-chandler.html

<comment><USER2> Did Chandler ever have any seasoned open source developers working on it?

Perhaps it's just me but it always looked like Mitch just got a bunch of eager developers and said "go forth and produce some great software".

<comment><USER3> The team at OSAF was really quite good. They werent seasoned open source developers, they were serious developers. Some were world class. But it was hamstrung by a series of bad decisions and some bad management. I also think having infinite money is a _horrible_ thing for encouraging delivery.</comment></comment>


How Trip Adler Found His Idea For Scribd After Hanging Up On 1-800-ASKTRIP - <AUTHOR> http://www.fastcompany.com/1839420/the-pivot-scribd?partner=gnews

<comment><USER2> Clearly it should have been a 1-900 number.

(how hard is it to set up a 900 number?)</comment>


Thick coat of oil (likely BP spill) on Gulf sea floor - <AUTHOR> http://www.kansascity.com/2010/09/13/2219577/researchers-thick-coat-of-oil.html

<comment><USER2> Microbes'll eat it.

<comment><USER3> yum. I wonder if they would like an order of oxygen on the side.</comment></comment>


Two Naked Mole Rats, Seemingly Immune to Cancer, Got Cancer - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/20/science/two-naked-mole-rats-seemingly-immune-to-cancer-got-cancer.html <comment><USER2> Bear in mind that researchers have colonies of thousands of these animals, and in all the time people have been looking, only a tiny number of cases of cancer have been cataloged in this species. [1] Compare that with the cancer incidence and mortality rates in other mammals.

The present thinking on various mole rat breeds and their cancer resistance is that they have more active and more useful cancer suppression gene activities for p16, p21, p27, ARF, etc, and that their tissues have a lot more high molecular weight hyaluronan than peer species [2]. Disabling the gene producing the hyaluronan makes them vulnerable to cancer, and that appears connected to p16 activity.

The important outcome of the particular setup for naked mole rat biochemistry may be that their cells are a lot more sensitive to crowding, and will more readily self-destruct when that happens. Without that, cancer is more easily induced.

[1]: [http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0300985816630796](http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0300985816630796)

[2]: [http://www.rochester.edu/news/show.php?id=6572](http://www.rochester.edu/news/show.php?id=6572)

<comment><USER3> Is "crowding" a common state for tissue to get into? Polyploid plant tissue comes to mind.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> > Dr. Delaney and her colleagues have studied lesions on naked mole rats for > more than a decade [...]

One of the wonders of science is the important discoveries that come from a focused investigation into some of the most obscure things.

<comment><USER5> When we find people who are both talented and dedicated enough to focus on such a specific realm of science, we really ought to have plenty of money and resources for them.

I suspect we can be doing a lot better, but I doubt this is the worst of all the parallel universes when it comes to supporting science.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> > Three months later they found no remnants of the cancer, making him the > first known naked mole rat cancer survivor.

Did it magically cure itself? Does that ever happen in humans when there is no medical intervention? That seems amazing.

<comment><USER7> The body is fairly good at fighting off illnesses and disease. Not a doctor, but from what I have read often by the time someone is diagnosed with cancer it has progressed to a stage where the body's immune system has failed to fight it off, so it is probably rare for cancer to go away on its own. Here is one article suggesting that cancer can go away on its own: [http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2008/12/1...](http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2008/12/18/some- cancers-may-just-go-away.aspx)

<comment><USER8> >> so it is probably rare for cancer to go away on its own.

It is actually very common. It has happened to you many times without you knowing it. Cancerous cells can appear and be taken care of immediately by various natural mechanisms. There are mechanisms to correct errors in DNA before a cell divides, or a damaged cells can self-destruct. This happens all the time as skin cells deal with DNA damaged by UV light. And there are diseases that cause cancer not directly but because of breakdowns in these repair mechanisms (see DNA repair-deficiency disorder). If you looked at every cell in your body no doubt a great many are technically cancerous at any one time. A clinical case starts when the natural mechanisms fail and damaged cells divide enough to cause the disease we call cancer.

The distinction is medically important because if you go looking for every tiny little bit of cancer you will find a great many that would never give rise to a clinical case, that would never impact the patient.

<comment><USER9> Have you looked into what combination of mutation rates and number of required mutations would be necessary for your model to work? Usually people say it is something like 10^-8 per bp per division and you need to collect 3-6 mutations to get cancer.

<comment><USER8> Isn't cancer predicated on mutations that result in uncontrolled cell growth? I imagine there are a great many mutations that result in cell death or an inability to properly divide. Those mutations wouldn't contribute to cancer risk. So maybe you need 3-6 but only amongst those bits of DNA that actually matter.

<comment><USER9> Yes, that is correct. It would only be some "special" combinations of mutations, not just any set.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> What is the immunity to a cancer supposed to mean? Immunity to a random mutation in a cell's DNA?

<comment><USER11> I don't think so - I think it means the ability to destroy, or otherwise render harmless, those mutations that behave in a cancer-forming way.

<comment><USER10> The cell looks like normal one, perfectly legitimate, it just divide and divide..</comment></comment></comment>


Teacher's aide fired for refusing to hand over Facebook password - <AUTHOR> http://www.zdnet.com/blog/facebook/teachers-aide-fired-for-refusing-to-hand-over-facebook-password/11246

<comment><USER2> IANAL, but it seems as though an employer asking for a site password (consenting to which would cause you to violate the site's ToS) would be at a minimum guilty of tortious interference.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tortious_interference>

</comment><comment><USER3> In my opinion, if you are publicly posting inappropriate content and showing it at work to your co-workers and or students, then yes, there should be some consequence. However, if someone is snooping and around for personal info about a teacher or an employee, i believe there is a better approach to handling the situation. Perhaps maybe making the teacher or employee revoke public access to his or her webpage/personal info.

I can only imagine how many teachers and employees would be out of a job if all their personal and private life details dug up and investigated.

Everything is subjective in context.

<comment><USER4> if you are publicly promoting inappropriate content at work, there's no need for your password. the subject of inappropriate stuff on facebook needs context, employers asking for your password does not - there is no possible situation in which that could be justified.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Earlier discussion: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3782462>

</comment><comment><USER6> There might be no law in them asking for it. But there is no law saying you have to give it to them either.

</comment><comment><USER7> What I can't get my head around here is how these employers know someone has a FB (or any other) account, and what Earthly bloody business they imagine that it has to do with them?

Next, are they going to be asking for your bank card PIN numbers?

Tell them to go fuck themselves! And if they fire you, sue them. Better still, don't have an FB account. And if you do it certainly isn't going to be your "real" name.

A few test cases will soon put a stop to this business and take down a peg (or three) these "employers" with an inflated sense of their own importance.

Such impertinence!

<comment><USER8> A couple thoughts came to mind 1\. How big of a jackass a person would have to be to think it's ok to ask for someones username and password to anything shocks me 2\. I don't have a facebook account, so what would happen to people like me? Who would believe me? They might assume I'm a liar and treat me as though I'm being insubordinate I really hope Congress does somethings fast. Maybe we need a kind of "wall of shame" to report companies that do this in the meantime.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Total linkbait title, real story clears it up a bit:

"Hester was using Facebook . . . She jokingly posted a picture of a co- worker's pants around her ankles and a pair of shoes, with the caption "Thinking of you.""

I would be concerned too as a parent if a teacher's aid did that, and really if you have so little self-awareness that a public FB posting like that could get you in trouble you don't deserve to be employed around my kids.

<comment><USER10> "I would be concerned too as a parent if a teacher's aid did that" How is that concerning? If she'd posted a picture of herself executing kittens, or planning a series of gruesome murders, yes, sure, that's concerning. But a pictures of pants and ankles? How is that something to be concerned about? Or are you saying that you don't think that's anything to worry about, but you only want your children to be near adults who spend their lives in some kind of insane fearful paranoia? If that IS what you want, what's wrong with YOU? What kind of people would your children turn into if every adult they ever met was a terrified paranoic?

<comment><USER11> The keywords are "co-worker" and "public" post(as "visible to co-workers and student parents) here. As much as I dislike violation of privacy by employers as parent I'd be concerned about this.</comment></comment></comment>


The best programmer blogs from a to Z - <AUTHOR> http://sdtimes.com/sd-times-blog-best-programmer-blogs-z/ <comment><USER2> Uhm, what is this doing here on HN? A to Z? Congrats for knowing the alphabet and finding remotely relevant blogs for it, but I only made it to F and was not convinced:

* "According to SD Times senior editor Alex Handy" aka "according to some guy who works for the same company I write for"

* "doesn't directly write about coding or developing software, but his posts are creative" \- I really do love fine arts, but I don't coerce blog posts about them into my framework (or the a-z blog list I am trying to curate)

* 'Coding Horror has made it on several other "Best software development blog" lists in previous years.' \- I like CH, but it's not a resource for learning, it is a source for amusement for those who know.

* "For developers that are all about Docker" \- I am not, thank you.

* "His blog post on fonts created with neural networks generated a lot of traffic, so much that it ended up on Hacker News and took down his site (temporarily)" \- yes, it was cute. But nothing more.

* " He specializes in software architecture and design, performance, scalability, and agile development methodologies." \- good for him, now why exactly should I read what he writes?

Thanks, SDTimes, you just made it into my blackhole (aka an entry that points to 127.0.0.1 in /etc/hosts).</comment>